The Art
of Lossless
Data Compression
vol. 22b

Here are the results of tests performed in May 2001 to compare
lossless compression of "binary" files by all known good enough programs
developed for such purpose, including RK, DC, YBS, Bzip2, IMP, RAR and 7-zip.
See Archive Comparison Test by J.Gilchrist for more details: http://act.by.net
If anybody wants to start or continue such tests,
or can suggest some other sets of files, or other compression programs,
(not sources or algorithm descriptions, executable programs only)
or knows we have missed something important,
(some new fantastic technology, an algorithm or even a program capable
of lossless compression of up to 1000:1 etc.)
please let us know immediately: artest@inbox.ru Thank you!

What's new:

13 new programs tested: RK, SBC, ZZip, ACE, 7-zip, RAR32, WinRAR,
ERI32, BA, PPMD, PPMonstr, UHARC, Ufa1.
Test data was updated.
Latest beta versions of BEE, DC, UFA, UHArc are available
from authors by e-mail request:
BEE: Andrew.Filinsky@p11.f4.n452.z2.fidonet.org
DC: EdgarBinder@t-online.de
UFA: support@7-zip.com
UHARC: Uwe.Herklotz@gmx.de
ACB and BEE are not tested on all binary files any more,
both are too slow and not efficient on binary data,
especially with uncompressed multimedia,
their results can be found in previous versions of ARTest.
Results of BA and Pkzip are in full version only, BINARIES.DAT file.
FULL version contains all *.BAT and *.DAT files
you'll need to build 10 directories with 5945 files (artest22.zip\MAKE_BIN\*.*)
and to repeat all our tests (BINS.BAT, BINARIES.DAT).

WARNINGS:

ACB refuses to take files shorter than 257 bytes.
About 400 such files were processed with "rar a -m0 name.acb name.bin"
(see do_acb_u.bat and do_acb_r.bat in artest19.zip).
BA 1.00beta5 can't losslessly decompress many files: CUN5IF~1.bin, CUN6IF~1 etc
It says nothing like "CRC fails".
BEE can't decompress some files compressed in "solid" mode.
DC 0.99.158b fails to decompress HLPCOPY..bin, but only if you compress
with "-mb5" switch and [] filename like "any.dc5".
Says nothing like "CRC fails".
Bugs in tested version of ZZip were found,
but they are removed from latest version ZZip 0.36c .
Problems in all other compressors were not found.
The LATEST RELEASE, and all previous versions of these tests can be found
at http://geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/1995/ and http://artest1.tripod.com/
Send your suggestions, comments to artest@hotmail.ru
With best kind regards,
A.Ratushnyak,
RAO Inc.
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